Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring - and harrowing - works of fiction. Written several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz. Rich in irony and spellbinding prose, Heart of Darkness is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890 - the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade.

From the seed of an actual attempt, made in 1894, to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, Conrad created one of his most tense and chilling plots. The world of The Secret Agent - the world of law and order, fatuous civil servants and corrupt policeman - is grotesquely mirrored in its underworld, a squalid terrorist landscape inhabited by among others, the Professor, who always carries a bomb in his pocket, and Verloc the pornographer deceiver and spy. Repulsive characters and amoral caricatures collaborate to form a black satire on English society, a satire sharpened into focus with a portrait of 'family life': Winniw Verloc's story relentlessly told to its 'anarchic end of utter desolation, madness and despair'.

Lord Jim

This immortal novel of the sea is the story of a British sailor haunted by a single youthful act of cowardly betrayal. To the white men in Bombay, Calcutta, and Rangoon, Jim is a man of mystery. To the primitive natives deep in the Malayan jungle, he is a god, gifted with supernatural powers. To the beautiful half-caste girl who flees to his hut for protection, he is lord to be feared and loved. Lord Jim - Conrad's classic portrait of a man's guilt, his search for forgiveness, and his final, tragic redemption - is a work of enduring value, one of the world's great masterpieces.

Edited by Cedric Watts, Nostromo is a superb evocation of exotic scenery and of a rootless mixed-race society peopled by characters ranging from the intellectual cynic Martin Decoud to 'Fussy Joe' Mitchell of the Merchant Service, from liberal idealists to fanatical clerics.

More by Joseph Conrad

As these three specially commissioned stories amply demonstrate, Conrad is our greatest wrtier of the sea. His characters are tested by dramatic events 'that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistaance and the secret stuff of his pretenses, not only to others but also to himself.

Under Western Eyes traces a sequence or error, guilt, and expiation. Its composition placed such demands upon Conrad that he suffered a serious breakdown upon its completion. It is by common critical consent one of his finest achievements.

The story of a radically isolated, philosophically minded soul living apart on a South Sea island, who performs two acts of instinctive kindness and thereby embroils himself in storms of greed and vengeance, and of love and mercy.

In many ways an autobiographical narrative, this masterpiece of his final period relates the story of a young and inexperienced sea captain whose first command finds him with a ship becalmed in tropical seas and a crew smitten with fever.

A child, the heir to the fortune of a wealthy Indian Army officer, disappears. The general has died leaving a will in favor of the child, but, in the case of the child's death, the rogue Sanderson--who poses as John Simcoe-will inherit. Sanderson is exposed as the murderer of the General and the forger of his Will, and the child is found.

In Flora de Barral, the slender, dreamy, morbidly charming daughter of a parvenu financier, Conrad creates his most complex heroine and one of his most unrelenting, but not unhopeful, novels of emotional isolation. Neglected by her bankrupt father and rejected by her governess, drifting into abstraction and despair, Flora takes refuge at sea on Captain Anthony's ship, where tragedy and her transformation begin. When published in 1913, Chance was an immediate success.

Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters when he rescues a young English girl, Lena, from Zangiacomo's Ladies' Orchestra and the evil innkeeper Schomberg, taking her to his island retreat. The affair between Heyst and Lena begins with her release, but the relationship shifts as Lena struggles to save Heyst from the detachment and isolation that have inhibited and influenced his life.

A few pre-reading activities are included to gauge a student's familiarity with the context of the novel. Once the student has began reading the novel, vocabulary activities, graphic organizers, review and comprehension questions, quizzes, a final test, puzzles, project and essay ideas, and a line-listed answer key are included. Exercises help students focus on literary and character analysis, as well as critical thinking and comprehension skills. Student questions reference the edition quoted in the front cover. [Signet Classic/penguin paperback edition] Pages are reproducible for classroom use; softcover. Answers included. Grades 9-12.